So, Administration, "fix" the LOS bug, or else Blue-PKs will not be able to "safely" idle-off murder counts, and Stat-PKs will not be able to "safely" macro back their losses: the "deaths" of the Murderers is the death of the shard!

I'm pretty sure it was Vega, earlier in this thread, who advised, "grow a pair": I agree; after a pair has been grown, grow up.

Personally, I am glad that the Administration does not cater to the whines of douchebag sucks.

Great, now that you've wiped the reminants of Vega from your lips and chin, we can get back to discussing a return to a shard that acurately reflects the UO T2A that we knew and loved.

And, God forbid, in the process we get some people back to the shard.

SighelmofWyrmgard wrote:

Personally, I am glad that the Administration does not cater to the whines of douchebag sucks.

BTW, Earth's 'Superest'-Genius-Ever, the word is, "remnants": were it anyone other than you, I'd be amazed that it hadn't been caught by the auto-editor (of course it was); you are one of those rare individuals who aptly demonstrates that anything that should 'run on rails' can be run off the rails, simply because the immense depths of of-all-possible-idiocy cannot be predicted.

You seem to go on and on about a certain manly substance: how about you just eat some, and shut up; I am minded to observe that, for anyone who doesn't already 'have a pair' and/or can't 'grow a pair', an outside source would be required. Good luck with that.

So, Administration, "fix" the LOS bug, or else Blue-PKs will not be able to "safely" idle-off murder counts, and Stat-PKs will not be able to "safely" macro back their losses: the "deaths" of the Murderers is the death of the shard!

I'm pretty sure it was Vega, earlier in this thread, who advised, "grow a pair": I agree; after a pair has been grown, grow up.

Personally, I am glad that the Administration does not cater to the whines of douchebag sucks.

SS

Your post proves my point - IN ERA - which staff "claim" to wantto emulate 100% - you could do the above - WORRY FREE. On this shard, with current mechanics, you can't. Thus - NOT ERA ACCURATE.

Modern day programs (Razer) allow you to take advantage of the code that is in place to do things you couldn't do in era.

Thus it needs to be fixed to be era accurate. Thanks for helping me make my point.

IMHO UOSA has been going in the wrong direction for years now (It really does not have to be this way in the future at all), but unless there is a serious change and healing of heart this will not be fixed. When staff starts caring more about the community and actually creating a close to T2A experience rather than focusing on gameplay hurting areas of literally imaginative code based the impossible goal of era accuracy, then maybe we could recover some players who left for these very reasons. This really is one of many achievable goals.

Now not to say, staff does not care about the community at all. Some staff regularly does turn a deaf ear toward players.There is always members of community that are roadblocks to progress. These individuals regularly refuse to consider the community's concerns, choose to regularly take on the mantle of the adversary with others, and make excuses rather than promoting creativity.A minor change in deference would create more opportunities for staff and players to have their cake and eat it too.

This line of sight bug is just another example of that fact, which is evidenced by a simple review of this or other threads where large amounts of the community are requesting a thing that is not considered and/or immediately shot down. The tact in this area is seriously lacking. Staff could at least consider many things they don't agree with, or have already made a decision on. The fact is they may be wrong, it should stay on the table and they should seek out additional information and feedback. Willingness to make reversing decisions and/or new patches ought to be the norm, and not just a single instance here or there in a swath of hard stances and philosophies which last years before being changed -- often only after a great loss such as new staff coming in to replace the old staff.

Staff has been focused for years on patching in game breaking, quality degrading, era inaccurate ideas that are clearly not strongly backed up by patch notes or player experiences. Each time this happens we lose players. This is because of the staff and community attitude before and after the patch, as well as the unwillingness to change. We gain some back with some more hard work by staff and the community, and then another patch comes the same poor atittudes present themselves again and we lose more players. I'm sorry in the case this seems harsh, but let's be realistic. We all know very well that katana was not the fastest weapon, tamers had a different experience in OSI, stables here aren't within an every day T2A experience even though they may be "era accurate", auto events didn't exist but there was a ton of GM, Seer events, and there were Counselors. Era inaccurate bugs exist here and are not fixed, while "era accurate" bugs are patched in which are simply exploits or game breaking they were never intended or experienced in T2A. This is not the only one, it's going to happen. Clearly documented OSI rules are not enforced which would be applicable on UOSA or were enforced in the past -- players are allowed to exploit the game freely in ways that were not possible or even not allowed on UOSA/OSI at some points in era. Add ons are not given out or managed in any kind of system that is documented, consistent or fair for the community. The add on "GM Blessing" situation here is so very very far from era accurate. There are glacial staves, neon sandals. This server is not era accurate. It will NEVER be era accurate.

Let's be honest with eachother: ERA ACCURACY IS A NON-ENTITY, AN UNATTAINABLE FICTION MADE UP IN THE MIND.

Thanks to the community and staff for the hours, days, months, years of hard work and financial support. The staff has done a very fantastic job with UOSA, released lots of great patches, and put up with a ton of crap from the community - all the while remaining arguably resiliant throughout nearly constant lambasting from players. We've had GM assisted player events over the years, as well a good amount GM run events at a reasonable and increasing frequency -- even when players have been vocal against the direction staff has chosen for the events and the server. All this has required a great investment, and a debt of gratitude is owed to one another.

UOSA Is still the best most era accurate UO server out there and likely always will be... However, select staff has always conveniently ignored their own hubris, attacked and lashed out, and even punished the community (sometimes severely) for speaking out on a regular basis through the years -- they've dished out more than their own fair share of crap as well.

The lesson from this is in my mind is really willingness to abandon past mistakes. Staff and community needs to find some middle ground in the future that creates progress from these long standing issues which keep being addressed month to month, year to year (with out actually being resolved) and have some willingness to move forward and actually give careful consideration about how best to resolve the issues permenantly.

The "list" staff has and community has should be made transparent and agreed upon, merged and prioritized. There needs to be some kind of community liasons (volunteers? Counselors?) that work with and are recognized by the community and staff as having the appropriate candor required to help UOSA reach mutual goals. Not everyone is going to be happy, but there needs to be greater compromise or the server is going to continue to suffer into the future. Maybe the community (and staff) doesn't want more players? I HIGHLY doubt that is the case, but this may actually be the truth. Motives ought to be transparent, players deserve honesty.

Mental gymnastics, and circular logic are not legitimate arguments or approaches from staff or the community. The only way to approach this is an experiential and experimental fashion. We need to have a willingness to try something, and see whether staff or community is right about their ideas -- based on the outcome of those experiences and experiments. Staff or community arguing based on some obscure and unclear notes, one persons memory, or some kind of other flawed basis is not a legitimate way of proving your point or convincing the other party your right. Just because you are "Staff" or you played in 1999 constantly doesn't mean you're right. Staff actually updating some code, staff & community trying something out (test server? like where OSI tried out their patches to see how players reacted to them?), seeing how it works, whether it will affect game play as desired, and whether it will push us closer toward a real T2A experience. When community is given a chance to have an experience and provide feedback, proactively BEFORE things go live we can adjust these proofs/concepts into something much more grounded in era accuracy that translates into real population gains.

UOSA needs to have a vibrant experience that is regularly changing, even though era accuracy can't be achieved -- it is clearly the goal. UOSA should and I believe is perpetually working/tweaking toward this goal with patches. You could view a patch like this as part of that experience, even though it doesn't improve gameplay (for most) or replicate a T2A experience. I'd personally argue that it is not era accurate. In any case, it's 2016 we should be willing to add in and live with some things we don't agree with that are in the spirit of T2A (maybe even this LOS bug should be appreciated a bit more). I think that a significant focus shift toward improving the server (staff and community) and making a positive impact would be a huge bonus for us on this server. Quests is a big thing that was present in OSI and is incredibly lacking here... we have the capability now to do some things with quests that weren't possible in T2A but likely would have been done... there's so much that can be done here on UOSA to improve the gameplay and still be reasonably true (and probably closer than we are now) to era accuracy.

We need to be willing to experiment, make mistakes, be more forgiving, understanding, and tactful. Hopefully I haven't failed here but the proof is in the pudding. Open mindedness and willing to try new things, fix old mistakes, and actually listen to eachother will help a lot. Needless to say, staff has limited time and resources so somebody really needs to organize community concerns into something digestable and useful for staff beyond forums feedback.

Nobody is perfect. Staff works hard and does a lot of things. However, I close with the obvious. Some of those things are absolutely the wrong things, we regularly lose and lost many players because the staff is unwilling to listen to or show a reasonable amount of care to it's players. They then blame those players for their own mistakes, rather than taking responsibility for their actions or lack of action. It's not just because UO is less popular, that argument is not legitimate. There is no direct relationship between search engines and logins, that is not demonstrated in reality -- saying this protects others who are actually causing harm to UOSA from taking responsibility for their bad actions. The fact is people leave, because staff and the community didn't listen to them or show them enough care and most continue playing UO elsewhere. BUT, it's not all staff's fault. How we treat eachother AND how we treat staff as well has a massive impact on whether people want to play on this server or make a contribution. A lack of consideration and adversarial conflict is the primary force driving potential players away from playing here... Anyways I'm speaking from experience, observation, and player testimony here, and I'm not talking about game play styles. I'm talking about listening to people and giving their ideas earnest consideration in a respectful manner (listening to staff, listening to players). The players who are leaving us aren't leaving because some LOS bug (even though they might claim to), or because Derrick isn't holding their hand, they're leaving because they don't feel like they have a voice in the direction of the server. When his availaibility shifted the problem was exacerbated because Derrick was a very good listener and the remaining staff less so at that time. The same thing happened as other staff left/got fired that actually listened to players. The faster we can all realize these critical errors that were made in the past and are still being made still by some from time to time (staff/community members who are taking on the role of the adversary instead of thoughtful listener) the faster we can begin moving the server proactively in a direction that supports UOSA's vision, a better game play experience, and a more positive environment -- there absolutely is an overlap within the staff/community.

I hope that all who read this consider that there are human minds, hearts, and so much more than the 1s and 0s on this server.

John Donne wrote:

No man is an island,Entire of itself,Every man is a piece of the continent,A part of the main.If a clod be washed away by the sea,Europe is the less.As well as if a promontory were.As well as if a manor of thy friend'sOr of thine own were:Any man's death diminishes me,Because I am involved in mankind,And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;It tolls for thee.

_________________Fit: Alderman, Merchants of Britannia: Proudly serving UOSA for more than 70 Sosarian years.

Last edited by dren on Fri Feb 12, 2016 5:32 pm, edited 71 times in total.

tldr (my point);Community(includes staff in this future paradigm -- always did in reality, would be cooler to begin seeing more references to community instead of staff & community):

Let's move on from this thing(s) that maybe isn't so good and focus elsewhere(a thing that was done badly, a thing that wasn't done the way I liked, a thing that can be done that will upset many)and since we all have limited time and resources, let's focus on improving/changing something that is really good and will have a positive impact for the greatest number of players. Focusing energy in the areas that have the greatest reward for the community as a whole.

If we do this, it will enhance the strength of positive feedback loops with real and measureable changes. (Game design in the context of systems theory & social psychology)

e.g. Two Scenarios (paraphrased from various & player/staff comments to demonstrate a point)

1. Destructive scenario that happens regularly and shows a lack of consideration, laziness, dishonesty, and ill will

*Staff implements a new thing.*Player A: I don't like this thing because it's not accurate, here are notes and experiences and OSI stuff saying it's not accurate.Staff: I feel it is accurate, in any case changing it is too much work. We're not gonna change it any time in the forseeable future. If you want, you can talk to somebody who probably will not respond. If you don't like it too bad, you'll just have to find other things you like and continue playing on UOSA.Player B: GTFO Player A! It's definitely accurate! Staff says suck it up B*+$#!*Player A GTFOs, doesn't play UOSA anymore**Everyone suprised that Player A GTFO'd*

*Staff implements a new thing.*Player A: I think that this thing would be more accurate in the case it was done differently. Here's my idea to improve the situation. Thanks for your work.Staff: I will raise this to the attention of the rest of the staff, and wait for the community to provide more feedback. Thanks for sharing your opinion and I'll make sure it gets a fair evaluation. I will reach out, after I get more feedback and we properly evaluate the issue.Player B: I think that this thing from staff is a great contribution because of such and such. If we did things differently then we wouldn't be able to blah blah. Thanks!Player A: That's a good point. While I don't agree, thanks for pointing that out to me I didn't realize that we wouldn't be able to do blah blah.*Everyone likely learned something new*

Last edited by dren on Fri Feb 12, 2016 5:34 pm, edited 2 times in total.

The LOS bug is fucking stupid. The fact that it existed in the first place was an error, a mistake, on OSI's part and it was fixed immediately. To keep it on server for the sake of accuracy is ridiculous. Nobody is reflecting on their time on OSI servers talking about how great the LOS bug was and how much fun they had with the LOS bug.

Its been in-game for far too long and it does nothing but add negativity to the experiences on UOSA.

I'm with dren and Mens rear. The population here and in the past seems to be mostly supernerd exploiters, which is 100% not the majority of players in era until far into UOR. If these people are deciding era accuracy they of course will all agree that exploits are era accurate and piss on anyone who disagrees.

If only I can find the thread where the majority of players thought that attacking blues who were inside guard zones, from outside resulted in the blues being unable to call guards to whack them. Which was "era accurate" for like 6 months on OSI and changed really early on in T2A. Yet everyone swore up and down it worked this way simply because it made the world less safe which is the expected desire of the type of people who populate these forums.

I have a fun question for the admins - would the addition of a single 1x1 plot of land in the middle of the ocean in T2A be considered not era accurate despite changing no mechanics?If it's not era accurate than I'd say everything on this server that essentially changes no mechanics but is an addition, is not era accurate and should be removed immediately. And get rid of that "seige of trinsic" banner in Trinsic, that technically hasn't happened yet and doesn't belong in this era get it out of here. If it has jack to do with era accuracy what is the hold back to adding a new 1000x1000 dungeon containing monsters involved in events? Or really anything else that follows the spirit of the era (is that not the point of the server?) yet actually adds something.

I openly said that I wouldn't respond to this thread, but I do feel that since I've been implicitly called out that I have to respond to some of what's been said in the most recent responses. To compensate for that, I'm going to leave an official response at the top of this post regarding what will happen with LoS, and lock this thread, as no new evidence has been provided regarding the behavior of LoS to contrast to what we currently know, and this thread had devolved into waffling about whether someone thinks that the mechanic should or shouldn't be here. Feel free to start a thread in the Second Age Discussion sections of the forums to civilly continue talking about your opinions on the subject (I actually won't be responding to that thread since I'll have clarified what needs to be clarified here). With that out of the way, here is the official stance:

The behavior of line of sight will not be changed in any way until strong sources of information appear that directly contradict the known information on how it works.

Now that I've addressed that, let me address some of what's been said recently in this thread as it's important to understanding why we have the position we do on many things.

dren wrote:

Now not to say, staff does not care about the community at all. Some staff regularly does turn a deaf ear toward players. There is always members of community that are roadblocks to progress. These individuals regularly refuse to consider the community's concerns, choose to regularly take on the mantle of the adversary with others, and make excuses rather than promoting creativity.A minor change in deference would create more opportunities for staff and players to have their cake and eat it too.

This is one of the responses that I suspect is directly aimed at me, so I'll respond to this.

My role on UOSA is that of "domain knowledge" regarding the mechanics that were available during the era, which is the main mandate for the server (this is important and will come up later). In order to do my role properly, I must take an evidence based approach to whether something did or didn't exist on the server, not one based on whether people "remember" something. If we did that, several mechanics would not be correct for the era.

This role is also distinctly different from many other roles in that it isn't one that's swayed by opinion or open to debate in the traditional sense. If someone feels that a specific mechanic is broken, or should work another way, it doesn't matter that they feel that way if the evidence points in another direction. The result is that a lot of the time my responses will simply be a yes or no for whether certain mechanics should or shouldn't be changed, and that response will seem very "cold", because that's the expected result for an evidence based approach. It's important to understand this dynamic, because the heart of this particular thread, and many other threads, is based on this.

Of course, it should be noted that I'm always willing to consider, and encourage players to look for new evidence, as no one can be certain that a mechanic worked a specific way on November 23, 1999. That's what this sub-forum is mostly about - discussion of mechanics, what we know about them, and bringing new information fourth to have a more complete understanding of the mechanics as a whole.

dren wrote:

This line of sight bug is just another example of that fact, which is evidenced by a simple review of this or other threads where large amounts of the community are requesting a thing that is not considered and/or immediately shot down. The tact in this area is seriously lacking. Staff could at least consider many things they don't agree with, or have already made a decision on. The fact is they may be wrong, it should stay on the table and they should seek out additional information and feedback. Willingness to make reversing decisions and/or new patches ought to be the norm, and not just a single instance here or there in a swath of hard stances and philosophies which last years before being changed -- often only after a great loss such as new staff coming in to replace the old staff.

I think that this particular paragraph is a good example of what I'm talking about above, particularly the italicized part (I also didn't tailor my response with this in mind; this isn't the first time that I've pointed these things out).

dren wrote:

Staff has been focused for years on patching in game breaking, quality degrading, era inaccurate ideas that are clearly not strongly backed up by patch notes or player experiences. Each time this happens we lose players. This is because of the staff and community attitude before and after the patch, as well as the unwillingness to change. We gain some back with some more hard work by staff and the community, and then another patch comes the same poor attitudes present themselves again and we lose more players. I'm sorry in the case this seems harsh, but let's be realistic. We all know very well that katana was not the fastest weapon, tamers had a different experience in OSI, stables here aren't within an every day T2A experience even though they may be "era accurate", auto events didn't exist but there was a ton of GM, Seer events, and there were Counselors. Era inaccurate bugs exist here and are not fixed, while "era accurate" bugs are patched in which are simply exploits or game breaking they were never intended or experienced in T2A. This is not the only one, it's going to happen. Clearly documented OSI rules are not enforced which would be applicable on UOSA or were enforced in the past -- players are allowed to exploit the game freely in ways that were not possible or even not allowed on UOSA/OSI at some points in era. Add ons are not given out or managed in any kind of system that is documented, consistent or fair for the community. The add on "GM Blessing" situation here is so very very far from era accurate. There are glacial staves, neon sandals. This server is not era accurate. It will NEVER be era accurate.

There's a lot here, but I'm mostly going to be addressing the bolded parts.]

First, regarding "era inaccurate" ideas or concepts, I think it's important to once again point out that UOSA is not attempting to reproduce the era in it's entirety. UOSA is only attempting to reproduce the mechanics as best as possible. This means that things like seer run events, policies, and many other things are not being replicated for a variety of reasons - some of which are related to the fact that these things varied from server to server. This also means that whether something was done during the era (an era "idea" as it were) does not determine whether something was capable of being done (an era mechanic). As above, determining this is done using the best evidence at hand, and is an evidence based task.

Second, and somewhat related to the first, are the 3 things listed: katanas, tamer experiences, and stables. For katanas, this is information that was verified a while back: katanas are indeed the fastest weapon during T2A, and this is confirmed via demo code applied to the entirety of T2A weaponry and armor, confirming all of the base values for all items. For tamers and stables, the only thing I can say is much what I just said above: we aren't attempting to reproduce the experience, but the underlying mechanics. The knowledge of the players determines how the mechanics are used, and naturally, the mechanics will be used very differently by those that have more knowledge of how they work.

Finally, regarding era inaccurate bugs, if you know of a bug that is inaccurate, please post a thread about it here and provide some evidence for how it should work.

dren wrote:

Let's be honest with eachother: ERA ACCURACY IS A NON-ENTITY, AN UNATTAINABLE FICTION MADE UP IN THE MIND.

I agree, which is why we aren't attempting to achieve era accuracy in the sense of "the experience" because that varied from person to person. Mechanical accuracy is our main goal, and while it is also likely achievable, it is a discrete and objective task that can approach completion, whereas "the experience" has no such standard.

dren wrote:

UOSA Is still the best most era accurate UO server out there and likely always will be... However, select staff has always conveniently ignored their own hubris, attacked and lashed out, and even punished the community (sometimes severely) for speaking out on a regular basis through the years -- they've dished out more than their own fair share of crap as well.

I'm not going to assume that this is directed at me, but this is a pretty significant claim to lay out against any staff member. If you have evidence of this being done, I would like to see it (PM is fine).

Onslaught- wrote:

The LOS bug is fucking stupid. The fact that it existed in the first place was an error, a mistake, on OSI's part and it was fixed immediately. To keep it on server for the sake of accuracy is ridiculous. Nobody is reflecting on their time on OSI servers talking about how great the LOS bug was and how much fun they had with the LOS bug.

Its been in-game for far too long and it does nothing but add negativity to the experiences on UOSA.

I think that this is an important point, but the entire reason that LoS still behaves this way is due to the fact that our best information shows that the LoS code worked this way starting as early as late 1997, and continued to operate the exact same way up to a year ago (and probably still today).

GleepGlop wrote:

I have a fun question for the admins - would the addition of a single 1x1 plot of land in the middle of the ocean in T2A be considered not era accurate despite changing no mechanics?

It depends on what you mean by era accurate. The only concern for the server is mechanical accuracy, and the existence of a 1x1 tile in the ocean doesn't change the behavior of land or ocean in any meaningful way from that perspective.

GleepGlop wrote:

If it's not era accurate than I'd say everything on this server that essentially changes no mechanics but is an addition, is not era accurate and should be removed immediately. And get rid of that "seige of trinsic" banner in Trinsic, that technically hasn't happened yet and doesn't belong in this era get it out of here.

IIRC the siege of trinsic banner is part of the client map file and isn't something that we can just get rid of.

GleepGlop wrote:

If it has jack to do with era accuracy what is the hold back to adding a new 1000x1000 dungeon containing monsters involved in events? Or really anything else that follows the spirit of the era (is that not the point of the server?) yet actually adds something.

It's a lot more complicated than simply if adding x doesn't change the mechanics, then y amount is obviously acceptable.

To provide an example, adding a single gallon of chlorine to a pool doesn't significantly change a pool, but adding 40,000 gallons of chlorine changes what's there to something that clearly isn't a pool but a tub of diluted chlorine. In the same sense, adding a temporary dock or decorations on an island doesn't change the the game in any significant way, but adding a sizable permanent customized dungeon clearly changes the game because you add in a new permanent dungeon and accompanying spawn that wasn't available during the era.

The exact line where something goes from simply an addon or decoration isn't defined, but for each thing there are obvious conditions that you can point to a threshold that's been crossed (e.g. if there is a brand new permanent dungeon, then it's not simply a small tile that's been added, but an entirely new dungeon that wasn't available during the era). By and large, that's why we can do customized spawns and decorations for long events, but it isn't permanent.

_________________

UOSA Historian and former staff member: August 11, 2008 - June 19, 2016

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